About “Black Lake”

In the album booklet, the sub-title for this song is “2 months after”, signifying that this song was written 2 months after the breakup of the relationship between Björk and Matthew Barney.

Described as “a 10-minute song in which she works up the nerve to throw darts at Barney and release the fluid fury of a woman scorned. It is a Björk diss track” and “Björk’s 10-minute version of Big Sean’s“I Don’t Fuck With You”,” Björk commented to Pitchfork:

I was really embarrassed about that song. I can still hardly listen to it.

During an interview for Grapevine.is she clarifies why the song is so long:

It’s like, when you’re trying to express something and you sort of start, but then nothing comes out. You can maybe utter five words and then you’re just stuck in the pain. And the chords in-between, they sort of represent that. […] We called them “the freezes,” these moments between the verses. They’re longer than the verses, actually. It’s just that one emotion when you’re stuck. It is hard, but it’s also the only way to escape the pain, just going back and having another go, trying to make another verse.

The music video was directed by Andrew Huang and was initially only available at Björk’s MoMA exhibit. A trailer of the music video was uploaded on MoMAvideos on February 13th, 2015, and the full music video was uploaded to Björk’s YouTube channel on June 9th.